# Things That Bother Me in Science Fiction Movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [October 24, 2023, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001 "2023-10-24T08:55:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 32
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2024, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/621 "2024-03-08T16:27:56Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > Well, we have a handy Earth-sized mass nearby, called Venus. You could try suspending Venus above a chosen location on Earth, and you’d get some pretty impressive antigravity there for the few seconds before the two planets crash into each other. Except that both Earth and Venus would start pulling each other apart once they were within a few thousand miles of each other. Planets are not billiard balls. ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2024, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/622 "2024-03-08T16:51:22Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Except that both Earth and Venus would start pulling each other apart once they were within a few thousand miles of each other. Planets are not billiard balls. No problem. You just shift Venus into position using one of ‘Doc’ Smith’s hyperspecial tubes; it pops out into real space at the exit of the tube. I recall that the Lensmen used a variant of this to destroy the planet of the evil Eich. Two planets with opposing velocities materialised on either side… they called it the ‘nutcracker’… ‘[Grey Lensman - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_Lensman)’ ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2024, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/623 "2024-03-08T17:13:27Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Planets are not billiard balls. Since each planet is rotating on its axis, there would be a lot of English on the shot. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2024, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/624 "2024-03-08T17:39:09Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > rotating on its axis, there would be a lot of English on the shot If it’s rotating, how can you guarantee it hitting England?!? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2024, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/625 "2024-03-31T00:17:17Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > > [@eburacum45](#): > > > > Well, we have a handy Earth-sized mass nearby, called Venus. You could try suspending Venus above a chosen location on Earth, and you’d get some pretty impressive antigravity there for the few seconds before the two planets crash into each other. > > Except that both Earth and Venus would start pulling each other apart once they were within a few thousand miles of each other. Planets are not billiard balls. That’s something that bothers TF out of me with a lot of bad sci fi. When a nearby celestial object causes objects on Earth to get pulled into space (examples include Moonfall and 3 Body Problem). Gravity is a function of mass and distance. Any object massive enough and close enough to Earth (or an Earth-like planet) to pull objects into the sky is going to tear the planet apart. ---
**Author:** ![Zakalwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zakalwe/32/270_2.png) [@Zakalwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zakalwe)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2024, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/626 "2024-03-31T02:57:21Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > (examples include Moonfall and 3 Body Problem). In 3 Body, doesn’t that happen only in a (very fancy) video game? ETA: A game that has people who instantly “dehydrate” in the sun and then rehydrate when tossed in water with no apparent harm. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2024, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/627 "2024-03-31T08:01:03Z")
Yes, in _3-Body Problem_ that happens in a virtual reality video game, not reality. It’s a poor example of the trope. I haven’t read the books, but from my limited understanding when one of the Trisolaris planets got too close to a sun(s) it was _pulled apart_, you didn’t just have people falling upwards, which is much more in line with reality. Spoiler alert: > **Summary** > > As it happens, if they’re following the books, the Trisolarans _can_ dehydrate, much like taridgrades here on Earth but they also aren’t much bigger than Earth tardigrades and not, like in the game, quasi-humans. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2024, 9:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/628 "2024-03-31T09:28:19Z")
In the show they specifically state that they present themselves as humans in the game but that’s not their true appearance. Wade also makes a throwaway comment that they need to figure out if their ships are “the size of cities or of thimbles”. So it sounds like due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, the entire Trisolaran fleet has a high likelihood of being eaten by a small dog. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2024, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/629 "2024-03-31T10:54:03Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Except that both Earth and Venus would start pulling each other apart once they were within a few thousand miles of each other. Planets are not billiard balls. Well, that falls under the definition ‘pretty impressive antigravity effects’. Perhaps a planetary-mass black hole would be slightly less destructive, especially if it just travels past at orbital speed. An Earth-mass black hole would be about a centimetre across. A relatively narrow path of destruction, perhaps a new accretion disk around the black hole, and gone. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2024, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/630 "2024-03-31T13:45:45Z")
An Earth-mass black hole would still have the same gravity as Earth; it would have a 1-G pull at a distance of ~4000 miles. It’s just that a black hole you can get much closer to it so the gravitational effects become even stronger. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2024, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/631 "2024-03-31T19:12:23Z")
Plus, of course, the infamous spaghettification effect where you’re close enough to the black hole that the distance difference between your head and your feet is great enough that you get torn apart. > **[Spaghettification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghettification)** > > In astrophysics, spaghettification (sometimes referred to as the noodle effect) is the vertical stretching and horizontal compression of objects into long thin shapes (rather like spaghetti) in a very strong, non-homogeneous gravitational field. It is caused by extreme tidal forces. In the most extreme cases, near a black hole, the stretching and compression are so powerful that no object can resist it. Within a small region, the horizontal compression balances the vertical stretching so that ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2024, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/632 "2024-04-01T17:38:57Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > An Earth-mass black hole would still have the same gravity as Earth; it would have a 1-G pull at a distance of ~4000 miles. It’s just that a black hole you can get much closer to it so the gravitational effects become even stronger. Precisely. An Earth-mass black hole could pass over the surface of Earth at a distance of 2000 miles, and its gravity would overcome Earth’s gravity over an entire hemisphere. Impressive antigravity effects indeed. The material pulled from the surface of Earth would form an impressive accretion disk around the black hole, although some of it would fall into the tiny event horizon and increase the blackhole’s mass. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2024, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/633 "2024-04-05T18:15:14Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Yes, in _3-Body Problem_ that happens in a virtual reality video game, not reality. It’s a poor example of the trope. True, but I thought the game was based on the actual environment of the Trisolaran’s planet. Sometimes it gets too hot. Sometimes it’s freezing cold. Sometimes the suns line up and the combined gravity pulls everyone and everything off the planet (which it wouldn’t because the planet would get pulled with you). ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2024, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/634 "2024-04-05T20:18:11Z")
I saw nothing in the show to indicate that the VR game was any more realistic than, say, _World of Warcraft_ or _Guild Wars_ or _Final Fantasy_. ---
**Author:** ![ZonexandScout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zonexandscout/32/544_2.png) [@ZonexandScout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZonexandScout)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2024, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/635 "2024-04-27T14:44:14Z")
Since _ **3 Body Problem** _ has been brought up and my wife and I just finished watching the series… I have problems (no pun intended) with most of the physics as depicted in the series. Frankly, that aspect is crap. But the concept of the sophons probably bothers me the most. It apparently takes “millions of years” and a huge amount of energy for the aliens to “unfold” the dimensions of a single proton (though they apparently make two of them), modify it to be a super-computer, and then shrink it back to the size of a proton so it can be sent to Earth at near-light speeds. I get it. But how does a sophon have the ability to affect anything once it is on Earth? It’s a positively-charged elementary nuclear particle. It’s smaller than the wave-length of visible light. It has no means of self-propulsion. Does it have to “unfold” its higher dimensions to function? How does it do that by itself when it took such a long and elaborate process to do it originally? How can it even emit a single photon to interact with the macro world? I just don’t get it. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2024, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/636 "2024-04-27T15:23:25Z")
> [@ZonexandScout](#): > > I just don’t get it. You don’t get it because it is [a steaming pile of crap](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-one-who-despises-the-three-body-problem/941027/13). ---
**Author:** ![ZonexandScout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zonexandscout/32/544_2.png) [@ZonexandScout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZonexandScout)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2024, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/637 "2024-04-27T15:27:46Z")
Dang. Missed that thread entirely. They are correct. ---
**Author:** ![ZonexandScout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zonexandscout/32/544_2.png) [@ZonexandScout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZonexandScout)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2024, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/638 "2024-05-01T14:16:48Z")
Crud…I’m responsible, directly or indirectly, for the previous three posts. But I won’t let that deter me. Just watched an episode of “Rebel Moon” and found it really bothered me that the blaster/ray-guns/phasers fire a beam that doesn’t usually align with the weapon’s axis. If you slow the action down, it becomes painfully obvious that the CGI people just drew a line from the front of each weapon to its intended target…wherever that may be. The protagonist can be pointing the weapon three meters to the left and slightly above her opponent and the visible beam obligingly veers over to wound the guy. I know this is done in a lot of movies and series, but it is really, really noticeable in “Rebel Moon.” ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2024, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/639 "2024-05-01T14:37:53Z")
I think, as alluded to in that linked thread, the depiction of scientists in fiction such as _The Three-Body Problem_ is problematic and plays into a lot of misconceptions. IRL scientists are _delighted_ to discover a new phenomena, or just data that doesn’t fit the predictions. Depicting them as dismayed reminds me of the “Grandma finds simple remedy for arthritis; _doctors are furious!_” memes. And how quickly some new observation makes scientists throw their hands up and declare “Everything that we thought we knew was wrong!”. “Everything that we thought we knew” was based on making accurate predictions and inferences. It’s not getting thrown away overnight due to finding something additional. It plays into the “What the bleep do we know” narrative. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2024, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001/640 "2024-05-01T18:13:47Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > IRL scientists are _delighted_ to discover a new phenomena, or just data that doesn’t fit the predictions. Depicting them as dismayed reminds me of the “Grandma finds simple remedy for arthritis; _doctors are furious!_” memes. The GIJoe movie had very, very little to recommend it, but one particular nadir is when character literally says, “I’m a scientist. I don’t believe in love.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001.md?page=31) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bother-me-in-science-fiction-movies/992001.md?page=33)